We’re excited today to announce the winners of Iterable’s 2021 Expie Awards!
These awards are designed to recognize and celebrate customers that leverage Iterable to power world-class customer experiences. From extraordinary customer engagement to authentic, empathetic connections, Expie Award nominees and winners raise the bar for marketers all over the world.
“This year, the Expie awards acknowledge the evolution of our industry; one that transformed because of the pandemic and has since shifted in profound and permanent ways. We’re honored to recognize the teams and individuals that are leading the charge for positive change. They’re the best of the best. The superheroes of customer experience,” shares Andrew Boni, co-founder and CEO of Iterable.
Here are the Expie winners of each category:
Marketing Dream Team of the Year, SMB: UNiDAYS
With more than 20 million verified members in 114 markets, UNiDAYS is the world’s largest student affinity network. Since launching in 2011, the UK-based technology company’s vision has been to support, enable and inspire young people to be their best selves, by leveraging their proprietary technology to deliver personalized experiences to the Gen Z audience at scale. UNiDAYS works with 800 of the world’s biggest brands, including Apple, Nike, ASOS and Microsoft, to deliver thousands of offers to tomorrow’s young professional, across food, tech, beauty, fashion and travel, along with helpful tools to support almost every aspect of the student experience, from health and fitness to career-launching skills.
“UNiDAYS started its partnership with Iterable in 2018, with the focus on satisfying the high expectations of our hyper-informed, hyper-connected customer base—students. However, our vision was never to stay still. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students were unable to study at their institutions and with physical shops closed, there was a real and immediate need to maintain high engagement with our audience,” shares Tamara Castelli, VP of Data and Insight at UNiDAYS. “We needed to raise our game and step-change our marketing capabilities, to become more sophisticated, automated and personalised. Thanks to the strength of the Iterable platform and our open minded, passionate and dedicated team, we are able to deliver extraordinary experiences to our customers. Our business has massively expanded as a result.”
Marketing Dream Team of the Year, Enterprise: NBCUniversal
NBCUniversal is one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production and marketing of entertainment, news and information to a global audience.They own and operate a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment television networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, world-renowned theme parks, and a premium ad-supported streaming service. NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation.
Most Valuable Marketer: Judy Kaufman at Oportun
Oportun is an A.I.-driven fintech company that provides hardworking people who have been left out of the financial mainstream with access to responsible and affordable loans.
The company’s mission is to provide inclusive, affordable financial services that empower its customers to build a better future. Oportun primarily services low-and moderate-income communities and helps its customers move forward in their lives, demonstrate their creditworthiness, and help establish the credit history they need to access new opportunities.
Oportun has been certified as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) since 2009, a recognition accorded by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in acknowledgement of Oportun’s primary mission of providing credit and financial services to underserved markets and populations.
Judy Kaufman is a Sr. Program Manager of Engagement Marketing at Oportun. She was nominated by multiple colleagues at Oportun, who shared, “In the year since joining our team, Judy has had a major impact on our automation program, leading to an increase in open rates, click rates, email volume and more. She has been instrumental to the success of our team; from building campaigns and workflows for customers across multiple channels, to building a platform almost from scratch, she’s had a hand in crafting a seamless experience for all of our customers.”
Marketing Moment of the Year: Calm
Calm is a mindfulness and mental health app that offers a range of original audio content including: guided meditations, soothing sounds and Sleep Stories to help users sleep better, stress less and live a happier, healthier life.
Calm went viral last year when they sponsored CNN’s coverage of the 2020 election, and they haven’t stopped making memorable moments that are resonating with their customers.
“At Calm, each moment we have with a customer is a chance to make a positive impact; an opportunity to build trust, and develop a long-lasting personal relationship. With Iterable, we can make sure to amplify these moments and magnify them into memories” says Sue Cho, Head of Lifecycle Marketing at Calm. “Partnering with Iterable, we can ensure that our brand ethos extends throughout the entire customer journey. With less time spent worrying about automation and scale, we’re able to invest more in our customers.”
Most Inspiring Switch to Iterable: Zoopla
Zoopla is one of the UK’s leading property marketplaces. They are a property portal website and app who provide estate agents with advertising through their website and our affiliated partner websites. Importantly, Zoopla isn’t just trying to connect customers with a place to live. Instead, they’re looking to connect people with a place to call home.
“Our ultimate goal is to connect homeowners to their dream property. Increasing digital engagement is the key to delivering on this vision. With our legacy tech stack, however, we were stunted by manual data queries, batch data imports, and fragmented views of customer engagement,” shares Kerry Finn, CRM Manager at Zoopla. “By modernizing our tech stack with Iterable, we now have a platform and a partnership that is unlocking our growth. We can now deploy the strategies we need to increase engagement, like testing and rollout. It has made CRM a genuinely much loved part of our business, with all product and technology teams now wanting to bake database remarketing and return driving activity into their plans.”
Best Use of Data: StreetEasy
You’ve probably seen their ads on the subway, on bus stations or on top of taxi cabs rushing by the busy New York City street. The call to action is quite simple: Find your place. StreetEasy is New York City’s premiere real estate platform for renters, buyers and sellers. If you are looking for a new home in NYC or Northern New Jersey, StreetEasy puts the power of search and discovery at your fingertips.
“Big data can often mean big obstacles when it comes to creating cohesive, personalized experiences. That’s not the case with Iterable,” shares Nate Casimiro, Senior Marketing Operations Specialist at StreetEasy. “With Iterable Catalogs and Collections, we’re able to populate complex calculations within communication templates, reducing the reliance on our engineering team and leveraging our data science and analytics teams instead. This has generated efficiencies that have allowed our marketing team to develop targeted, personalized emails and push notifications on significantly faster timelines. These communications are mission-critical to our team’s efforts as we deliver millions of targeted messages to our users each month to help them in their journey to finding their next home.”
Most Cohesive Customer Experience: Imperfect Foods
Imperfect Foods was founded in 2015 with a mission to eliminate food waste and build a better food system for everyone. They offer imperfect (yet delicious) produce, affordable pantry items, and quality eggs, dairy, proteins, and more, delivered conveniently to their customers’ doorsteps. Their customers can get the healthy, seasonal produce they want alongside the grocery staples they rely on, without having to compromise their budget or values
“We have a unique business model; our customers—each with different dietary preferences and sensitivities—must have an Imperfect Foods subscription and set a schedule to shop. They also have the option to customize their orders on a weekly basis. Thanks to Iterable, we’re able to deliver our customers individualized messaging at scale, and across multiple channels ensuring each individual receives an intensively personal and cohesive experience, “ shares Carlos Govantes, Senior Director of Lifecycle Marketing and Retention at Imperfect Foods. “Iterable is very intuitive and easy to use. We have been able to train a small team of customer care agents to deploy simple campaigns that notify customers when deliveries get canceled, changed, etc. This frees up so much time for the LCM team to focus on improving the user journey and allows our customer care team to directly connect with customers en masse.”
Iterable received fantastic submissions for each category, and congratulates the finalists of the Expie Awards: A+E Networks, Booksy, Carvana, Coinbase, Drizly, Epic!, Fender, Go Auto, HoneyBook, On the Beach, Patrick Mackie (Made Renovation), Priceline, Redbubble Inc., Sherise Fan (DoorDash), and WeTransfer.